MICHAEL KLEBER-DIGGS on

Natasha Trethewey​
Elegy ["I think by now the river must be thick"]
 
                                                                              For my father
 
I think by now the river must be thick
        with salmon. Late August, I imagine it
 
as it was that morning: drizzle needling
        the surface, mist at the banks like a net
 
settling around us — everything damp
        and shining. That morning, awkward
 
and heavy in our hip waders, we stalked
        into the current and found our places --
 
you upstream a few yards and out
        far deeper. You must remember how
 
the river seeped in over your boots
        and you grew heavier with that defeat.
 
All day I kept turning to watch you, how
        first you mimed our guide's casting
 
then cast your invisible line, slicing the sky
        between us; and later, rod in hand, how
 
you tried — again and again — to find
        that perfect arc, flight of an insect
 
skimming the river's surface. Perhaps
        you recall I cast my line and reeled in
 
two small trout we could not keep.
        Because I had to release them, I confess,
 
I thought about the past — working
        the hooks loose, the fish writhing
 
in my hands, each one slipping away
        before I could let go. I can tell you now
 
that I tried to take it all in, record it
        for an elegy I'd write — one day --
 
when the time came. Your daughter,
        I was that ruthless. What does it matter
 
if I tell you I learned to be? You kept casting
        your line, and when it did not come back
 
empty, it was tangled with mine. Some nights,
        dreaming, I step again into the small boat
 
that carried us out and watch the bank receding --
        my back to where I know we are headed

Michael Kleber-Diggs is a poet, essayist, literary critic, and arts educator. His debut poetry collection, Worldly Things (Milkweed Editions 2021), won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, the 2022 Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award in Poetry, the 2022 Balcones Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2022 Minnesota Book Award. His poems and essays appear in numerous journals and anthologies. Michael is married to Karen Kleber-Diggs, a tropical horticulturist and orchid specialist. Karen and Michael have a daughter who is pursuing a BFA in Dance Performance at SUNY Purchase.